بخش 03 - فصل 14

14 They don’t have to wait for the morning paper; the news that Donald Davis, already under suspicion for the murder of his wife, has confessed to the Turnpike Joe killings leads the eleven P.M. news. Hodges and

Janey watch it in bed. For

Hodges,

the

return

engagement has been strenuous

but sublimely satisfactory. He’s

still out of breath, he’s sweaty

and in need of a shower, but

it’s been a long, long time

since he felt this happy. This

complete.

When the newscaster moves

on to a puppy stuck in a

drainpipe, Janey uses the

remote to kill the TV. “Okay. It could work. But God, is it risky.” He shrugs. “With no police resources to call on, I see it as my best way forward.” And it’s fine with him, because it’s the way he wants to go forward. He thinks briefly of the makeshift but very effective weapon he keeps in his dresser drawer, the argyle sock filled

with ball bearings. He imagines how satisfying it would be to use the Happy Slapper on the sonofabitch who ran one of the world’s heaviest passenger sedans into a crowd of defenseless people. That probably won’t happen, but it’s possible. In this best (and worst) of all worlds, most things are.

“What did you make of what my mother said at the end? About Olivia hearing ghosts?” “I need to think about that a little more,” Hodges says, but he’s already thought about it, and if he’s right, he might have another path to Mr. Mercedes. Given his druthers, he wouldn’t involve Jerome Robinson any more than he

already has, but if he’s going to follow up on old Mrs. Wharton’s parting shot, he may have to. He knows half a dozen cops with Jerome’s computer savvy and can’t call on a single one of them. Ghosts, he thinks. Ghosts in the machine. He sits up and swings his feet out onto the floor. “If I’m

still invited to stay over, what I need right now is a shower.” “You are.” She leans over and sniffs at the side of his neck, her hand lightly clamped on his upper arm giving him a pleasurable shiver. “And you certainly do.” When he’s showered and back in his boxers, he asks her to power up her computer. Then, with her sitting beside

him and looking on attentively, he slips under Debbie’s Blue Umbrella and leaves a message for merckill. Fifteen minutes later, and with Janey Patterson nestled next to him, he sleeps . . . and never so well since childhood.